A gadfly has the floor at his local city council meeting, and he’s brought along visual aids to make his point. But his passionate argument has nothing to do with road repairs, zoning permits or other matters often discussed at such gatherings.
This man has fried food on the brain, specifically a new product from fast-growing chain Whataburger and how that crispy bone-free snack is identified.
“I know what a real wing is,” the man shouts as he points to the brand’s glamour shot of its saucy WhataWings. “That is not a wing!”
And so it begins, with Texas-based Whataburger wading into one of the fiercest yet silliest culinary debates in America—should a bone-free piece of chicken be allowed to call itself a wing? And what’s in a name, anyway?
To be clear, no one involved in the campaign from longtime agency of record McGarrah Jessee claims that the kerfuffle over messy finger food is in league with tax rates, outdated infrastructure or any other weighty community issue.
And yet the brand picked a well-known civic-minded setting, infused with some intentionally over-the-top histrionics, to launch its first boneless wing. The campaign experiments with humor as a departure from Whataburger’s usual marketing approach, with the product intro well-timed to the key Super Bowl party season.
“Wing culture has a lot of debates—ranch versus blue cheese, drum versus flat, wet versus dry—but no debate is more hotly contested than bone-in versus boneless,” AJ Hickcox, strategy director at McGarrah Jessee, known as McJ, told Adweek. “Ask any of your friends, do a quick Google search, scroll through X, take a plunge into the depths of Reddit, if you dare, and you’re going to find a lot of people have a lot of strong opinions on the boneless wing.”
There was even a nascent class-action lawsuit last year against Buffalo Wild Wings when an Illinois resident tried to claim false and deceptive advertising about its boneless wings, which Hickcox said proves that some people are serious about their semantics.
Given the landscape, Whataburger wanted to “get ahead of the criticism before the boneless wing naysayers out there even have the chance to voice their unrest,” Hickcox said.
Flightless bird
For the famously burger-centric chain, now covering 14 states with nearly 990 restaurants, the goal was to be cheeky and self-aware to announce its entry into the highly competitive chicken wing segment.
The product—formally deemed the All-New Boneless WhataWings, with nine pieces per order—is actually “chicken tender bites” tossed in various savory and sweet sauces. Despite the label, no subterfuge is intended, per the brand.
“We don’t deny it—there is no such thing as a boneless wing. But over the years, ‘wings’ has become shorthand for the flavor profile of fried, white meat chicken with a coating of flavorful sauce,” Donna Tuttle, Whataburger’s vice president of marketing and communications, told Adweek. “Instead of fighting that jargon, we’ve embraced it.”
Nuggets for grownups
Whataburger, which already has a line of chicken sandwiches, tenders and bites on its regular menu, wanted its own signature wing, even though the dish is admittedly a dressed-up tender. If there’s a misdirect, it’s made with good intentions, per the creatives.
“Adult chicken nuggets is probably the most technically correct name, but that doesn’t really roll off the tongue as well,” according to Cam Miller, creative director at McGarrah Jessee. “Also, these aren’t our only deliciously incorrect items on the menu—our french fries aren’t from France, and we’ve never put ham in the hamburgers.”
The agency chose a familiar trope—an enraged public speaker lecturing a group of elected officials—because it was both highly melodramatic and completely relatable. The 30-second hero spot, directed by Laura Murphy and produced by Gravy Films and The Voorhes, stars an incensed, bearded character affectionately called Wingnut.
A city council meeting is “one of the few places an argument like this would be granted a captive audience—just take a look at YouTube and you can find real examples of real people taking the podium at their local council meetings to make statements just as ridiculously off topic as this one,” Anna Crane, senior copywriter, told Adweek. “There’s something silly about government officials being paid to sit and listen patiently to every opinion, even one obsessed with chicken.”
In this case, the city leaders are already fans of Whataburger, with cups and packages on the dais and one council member devouring the new “wings.”
The broader campaign also includes a special utensil, shaped like a bone and designed to hold the chicken bites, and several sauce-inspired sweatsuits now on sale at the WhataStore.
In addition to serving as a product debut, the campaign aims to introduce the chain “to people who don’t know a lot about us,” per Tess Cullers, the agency’s brand director. “We haven’t leaned into much comedy for the brand, but we loved getting to flex here and show some personality.”
